الجمعة، 18 سبتمبر 2015

Rolls-Royce sees sales hit by Chinese slowdown

Rolls-Royce has seen sales of its luxury cars hit by a fall in demand in China.

The chief executive Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes said the turnaround in the market had been unexpectedly fast.

"We have been surprised by the speed of development in the Chinese market in a completely different direction," he said.

Chinese buyers have been affected by the slump in the stock market, slower growth and a corruption clamp-down.

He was speaking on the day of the launch of the Dawn, Rolls-Royce's new £250,000, 155 mph convertible, which the company described as "the sexiest Rolls-Royce ever built".

Mr Mueller-Oetvoes, talking to the BBC World Service's World Business Report, said: "The whole anti-corruption campaign... is very much around investigating where your money is from, to whom you are related and so on and so forth.

"That of course scares people who are quite affluent, and no one wants to be visible currently in that kind of environment and people are shying away from... obvious luxury goods, and that is not only true of cars but for jewellery and for precious watches and so on," he added.

But he added: "I am not in any way scared about that. We may see a dent in our volume line due to China, but that is a partial dent. And in particular with the new car that we will launch next year, the Rolls Royce Dawn, I am very optimistic."

Professor David Bailey from Aston Business School in Birmingham said: "I do think that China is going to affect the premium end of the market. The stock market crash will have some effect.

"But then again the ultra-high end of the car market works in a way of its own, so who knows exactly how sales will be hit," he added.

Mr Mueller-Oetvoes played down fears that recent events in Chine would last long, forecasting that sales there would recover in the next two years.

"China has never been our number one market. Our number one market is the United States and due to the fact we are properly balanced we can cope with some of the downturn in China," he explained.